Brotman: Chicagoans, cast your votes: Bears or debate?

Scheduling pits football against politics

October 22, 2012|Barbara Brotman

The Chicago Bears will play the Detroit Lions at Soldier Field at 7:30 p.m. Monday — about 30 minutes before President Barack Obama, a Chicago Democrat, takes on Mitt Romney, a Republican with Michigan ties. The debate will be in Florida. (Brian Cassella, Chicago Tribune)

Chicagoans face a choice Monday night:

There will be two contests to watch on TV.

Both will be fiercely fought. Both will demand strategy. Both will be overseen by referees and timekeepers.

Both will be analyzed by commentators, argued over by partisans and discussed in homes and in the press for days afterward.

Both are of considerable civic interest. But they will be televised, live, at virtually the same time, the Bears game at 7:30 p.m. and the presidential debate at 8 p.m. Which means that people are going to have to make a decision:

The debate or the Bears?

A lunchtime crowd at Manny's Cafeteria and Delicatessen, where the walls bristle with photos of President Barack Obama and one eating spot is labeled "David Axelrod's Table," argued both sides.

"Not a big decision. Not even close," said David Sapstein, of Arlington Heights. "The Bears game."

"The debate," said Selma Friedland, of the North Side. "I hope the Bears win. But this is very important to me."

Let the debate over the debate versus the Bears begin.

"The Bears game will be more exciting," Sapstein said. "Every game is different. Every game matters."

The debate, he said, will be none of those.

It won't be exciting, he said; the candidates will make the same points they have made many times before. It won't be different from other debates or speeches, he said, for the same reason.

And it won't matter, he said, because most people have already made up their minds.

Moreover, he said, it will be infuriating.

"They tell you what they're going to do, but they never tell you how they're going to do it," he said. "It's a facade.

"Plus," he said of the football game, "they're playing the Lions."

Friedland was equally fervent about watching the debate. After Republican Mitt Romney did so well in the first debate, she considers this third meeting between the two candidates crucial for Obama, her choice.

"I think it could be one of the items that makes or breaks him," she said.

And tonight's subject, foreign policy, deserves the public's close attention. "People should know about this," she said.

But the subject matter is only one aspect of the choice. Another is the viewing experience.

Sapstein pointed to a crucial difference between the two: People will watch the football game to see who wins, but they will watch the debate to see how well the candidates perform.

For Diane Valos, of the North Side, watching a debate isn't a pleasant one. It's an uncomfortable reminder of the sharp divisions in the nation and the city.

But the Bears game? Chicagoans are all cheering on the same side.

She's choosing football.

"I would rather watch the Bears and be part of one city united than watch the debate and be part of a country divided," she said.

Of course, there are technological ways around the conflict. You can watch one of them live and one on a delay. You can switch back and forth. You can switch as a partisan, changing channels when the candidate you oppose is speaking.

But watching an event live joins you to all the other people watching it at the same time. You have something in common with them; you share certain interests or values.

Or, in the case of a political debate, you don't.

When it comes to tonight's options, I have no conflict. I don't follow football.

Even though we will be watching the debate, however, I won't mind if my spouse turns occasionally to the Bears.

The game would be so much less stressful for me than the debate. I don't care who wins. The outcome will have no effect on the future of the nation.

The contest will be physical, not personal. And there will be no spinning the result. One team will win and the other will lose. Everyone will agree on which is which.

Two live competitions, with fans rooting for their side to land a knockout punch, but with very different stakes.